Any chances of opening a Film Festival thread? I'd much rather talk about the two fucking incredible films I saw yesterday sans thread-jack than more Party Central/Rugby World Cup idiocy I just don't give a shit about?

Send me the review! I'll run it in Speaker and give the System feature spot to Film Festival discussion for a while.

After seeing 'Once Upon A Time in The West' in it's full Civic glory, you can have my Leone DVDs. They're dead to me... :) And there's Senso and The Red Shoes still to come. I know the financials probably wouldn't stack up, but I envy cities that can sustain (however precariously) a decent repertory cinema. (OK, I now know what to do when I win Lotto -- right next door to the bookshop.)

At an early age he fell in love with the buildings of Frank Lloyd Wright and the writings of Ayn Rand - and he hasn't been the same since. He loves, he says, his 'six R's' - Rodin, Wright, Rand, Reed (Lou), Richard (Wagner), and Robert (Heinlein).

he forgot to credit another R – Wilhelm Reich - his ranch was also called Organon- though I find Reich more interesting than Rand that's for sure...

I wonder if he is related to that other noted kiwi libertine and "free thinker" D'Arcy Cresswell ?

Whatever happened to robust debate about things? Must we all agree on everything--and close down debate on all those who don't agree with us?

"Robust debate" requires someone starting off with a coherent argument that bears some relationship to reality. I've done wonders for my blood pressure and general mental health since I've stopped trying to rationally engage with the fundamentally irrational, or rewarding mental and spiritual infants with attention.

Re: Andy Haden, I'm very interested to get the following information:1) how many of his celebrity rugby mates have been charged with rape after having refused to pay a girl money.2) how many of his celebrity rugby mates have been charged with rape (or perhaps anticipated a rape charge), and subsequently instructed their lawyer to pay the complainant off to make it all go away.

Here's a more pertinent question for me, Heather:

How many past and present All Blacks have passed their lives able to go out in public without acting like Visigoths with erections at the sight of a pretty woman? Those professional sportsmen who don't treat women like semen spitoons should grow a pair and speak up.

The ironic thing is that, if it wasn't for the millions of dollars our government is shovelling the way of Big Sport, the wingnuts might have a point that the moronic rantings of Haden are a private matter between him, his talkback radio employer and the NZFU.

How many past and present All Blacks have passed their lives able to go out in public without acting like Visigoths with erections at the sight of a pretty woman? Those professional sportsmen who don't treat women like semen spitoons should grow a pair and speak up.

Oh, I am sick of the RWC already. As if it isn't bad enough that they've ripped up the end of Sandringham Rd for beautification or some such thing, now we see McCully's and Haden's faces all over the place. And Aucklanders who want to rent their houses to rugby fans are just becoming bizarrely greedy. And there's still arguments about what to do with the wharf. Do the fucking thing up already. Hurry up and finish Sandringham Rd, and the Eden Park do up. And for christs sake, let's get this bloody thing over and done with.

Any idea what was so 'stunning[ly] restor[ed]' about that one? The sound was poor (at both sessions, I'm told) and visually, it was full of all the scratches and rips you'd expect of a 40-year-old print. I don't get it.

The ironic thing is that, if it wasn't for the millions of dollars our government is shovelling the way of Big Sport, the wingnuts might have a point that the moronic rantings of Haden are a private matter between him, his talkback radio employer and the NZFU.

Not so. The privilege of broadcasting to the public brings responsibilities for any organisation and person. Ask another bully Paul Henry about that.

TVNZ took insufficient action after ruling Breakfast host Paul Henry had gone too far when he described singer Susan Boyle as "retarded" on its morning show, the Broadcasting Standards Authority (BSA) has ruled.

...

"While Mr Henry's cruel comments and actions were brief, the message that viewers would have received was that people with intellectual disabilities can be identified and characterised by certain physical features, and are appropriate subjects for ridicule."

The majority of the BSA considered that Mr Henry's comments, "had the effect of reinforcing and legitimising particularly repugnant attitudes towards intellectually disabled people".

I've done wonders for my blood pressure and general mental health since I've stopped trying to rationally engage with the fundamentally irrational, or rewarding mental and spiritual infants with attention.

Good to hear. Problem is, many of the fundamentally irrational believe that absolute power comes from the barrel of a Caran D'Ache fountain pen.

Going back to the Paul Holmes quote, I loved this line (emphasis added):

Certainly, the Historic Places Trust, whoever they are, think so.

Here's a clue, Paul. It's in the title.

And re: the Once Upon A Time In The West screening, I saw a print here three weeks ago and there was definitely no major scratches or obvious deterioration in the audio or visuals. Maybe someone's got an unrestored copy by mistake?

Any idea what was so 'stunning[ly] restor[ed]' about that one? The sound was poor (at both sessions, I'm told) and visually, it was full of all the scratches and rips you'd expect of a 40-year-old print.

Well, to be fair, the print was in the condition you'd expect for one that's been in circulation for over three years. Cannes gets prints barely dry from the lab, we're seldom that fortunate.

Paramount let the elements degrade terribly -- I looked at my DVD this morning, and the colour transfer was noticeably muted and the sound less than optimum. I did notice the wow and flutter in a number of sequences but I understand that couldn't have been fixed without totally re-recording the sound from scratch.

Film negatives are seldom stored in optimum conditions (many films have basically degraded beyond repair), and this film only got restored at all because of a partnership between Scorsese's Film Foundation and the Rome Film Festival.

The studios themselves, in my opinion, are guilty of cultural vandalism of barbarian proportions. The one moment on the commentary track of my DVD of Vertigo where I almost had a heart attack was restoration producer Robert Harris saying that if they'd gotten the greenlight five years later it wouldn't have been possible. I know film restorations aren't cheap, but I think studios are being penny wise and pound foolish in letting their archives rot. It's not only culturally irresponsible, but bad business.

I wouldn't say major scratches or deteriation, just the usual stuff, but it just didn't look or sound restored at all, unlike Gone with the Wind, 2001 etc. which really were stunning.

3410: Oh, I agree with you that the 70th anniversary re-releases of Gone with the Wind and The Wizard of Oz were astounding. To be quite blunt, it helps when the respective studios were willing to commit years and enormous sums to the effort. 2001 was also helped by Kubrick being anal, in the very best sense of the word -- giving his films a buffing for BluRay/DVD re-releases was vastly helped by a director with the eye of an artist and the soul of a librarian.